Using ‘@’ for a directory name

directoryfilenames

Though Unix/Linux will technically allow any character in file and directory names, using punctuation is almost always fraught with peril due to the extensive use the O/S makes of punctuation for delimiters, etc.

That said, I'm experimenting with something that would benefit from having a directory named just the single character @ (at sign).

I've encountered no problems with a few days of use but may be overlooking something.

Are there commands or circumstances where this could come back to bite me?

Best Answer

I'm fairly sure that one is reasonably safe. It's not a shell metacharacter in any shell that I'm familiar with, and I can't think of anything that uses it as a delimiter. It's also already in use in file names by common applications. For example, it's common to use it for naming the sockets for ssh's ControlMaster.

ls -F does use it as the character to mark symlinks, which may be slightly confusing to someone, but colorized ls won't have that ambiguity.